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Thursday, January 14, 2010

Yam-tastic!

Okay before I start any other blather, I really have to tell you about the sweet potatoes I made last night because they were killer. All I did was take two sweet potatoes and scrub them well. Then I took some butter and gave the sweet potatoes a massage. Then I mixed together 1 teaspoon of chili powder, 1 teaspoon of cumin and 1 teaspoon of sea salt (or kosher salt or what ever kind of cheffy kind of salt we have) and then I cover the sweet potatoes in the spicy stuff. Then I wrap them in waxed paper and nuked them for about eight or nine minutes (until I could squeeze them and feel the give). I cut those bad boys open and broke up the insides a bit with a fork and then I put lime juice inside. No butter, no fat grams, just lime juice. I really expected Big Daddy to give me a pat on the head for busting out the spices and getting an inch or two out of my comfort zone, but what I didn't expect was how freaking good it was going to be. Chef ate it skin and all while I just sort dragged each fork-ful through the chili seasoning. The lime juice just gave it this extra zing but you really don't notice that it's lime juice. It made the sweet potato sweet potato-ier. I busted out a little pork loin action and the daily tossed salad and doooood, when Big Daddy looked at me and said that was deeeeelish, I looked right back at him and said "I know."

For anyone who may not know, Big Daddy is a chef and while he will sputter and hem and haw about what he does right now and where he does it, make no mistake--from the tippy top of his big old mellon head to his tore up from the floor up feet, that man is a chef. Now a lot of people think that makes him a prissy eater or a kitchen snob--he is neither. He likes whatever he doesn't have to cook and we've got the same folgers coffee and uncle ben's rice mix that everyone else does. We shop at Kroger and Sprouts and occasionally very occasionally we go to Whole Foods and Market Street for something special because it's just too painful to spend two weeks in grocery bills on one meal. I can't remember anything I've made that he has not been kind about but cooking every day is a lot of pressure! I have trouble getting everything done at the same time or I get a little too ambitious and I wind up multitasking and over cooking a thing or two. There are LOTS of times when I'm completely uninspired and if I don't pay attention we'll eat pork four nights in a row or I'll do something mexican flavored for days and days and days. Then there's the battle with left-overs, I say it's a bonus if you eat stuff more than once, but Chef has a really hard time watching food go in the disposal. It causes him physical pain. All this to say that I feel inadequate in the kitchen often and I face that inadequacy five days a week. That is what I choose to do because I want to be a killer cook and the only way to become a killer cook is to practice practice practice.

I was never the house wifey type. I never made beds or stayed on top of the laundry. I cleaned when I felt like I had to and any request by a potential house guest was met with a very hesitant, "Well, I guess so." So this married thing and this stay at home thing is a completely new planet for me. For the first year and a half we were together, Big Daddy and I played show and tell as we got to know each other, but I already knew the things I was showing and telling. These days, I'm finding there are things I didn't know about myself that are being reveled through our relationship. It's a little alarming at times to realize that I am completely exposed with him and while I've always been a fairly open book, I've never been this open. I was talking to a girlfriend about it today and she said, "Oh yeah, you'll be learning tons of things you didn't know about yourself and each other for years (and years and years and years)." All I could think was, God I hope so.